2 ringleaders held

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Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) yesterday arrested Md Abbas Ali and Nasir Uddin, the ringleaders of “Abbas-Nasir” smuggling group who allegedly had two Vishnu statuettes stolen at Zia International Airport and destroyed.

A Rab source last night told The Daily Star that Abbas was arrested in Malibagh-Khilgaon area while Nasir was arrested at Uttara in the capital.

As Rab that arrested Abbas and Nasir were conducting more raids last night in connection with the theft of the statuettes, the source refused to give more details about their arrest.

Rab officials Thursday came to know about Abbas and Nasir’s involvement in the theft through the confessional statements of arrestees of the case.

Since then, investigators have been saying that they would be sure about the motive behind the theft and the destruction of the statuettes once the two are arrested.

Investigators yesterday recovered four more broken pieces, which seemed to be parts of the two stolen statuettes, but experts are yet to confirm these pieces as fragments of the 1500-year-old terracotta Vishnu and Bust of Vishnu statuettes.

Rab found the four pieces during their daylong search for the missing fragments of the statuettes at a garbage dumping ground of Baliarpur in Aminbazar on the outskirts of the capital.

Major Aminul Haque of Rab-1 told The Daily Star last evening that they would ask National Museum officials to examine whether the four fragments were of the archaeological masterpieces.

The two artefacts along with 143 others were awaiting shipment to Paris for an exhibition at the Guimet Museum. They were stolen at the airport on December 22.

Aminul said it appeared to them that out of the four pieces, two could be part of the hand of the black terracotta statuette of Vishnu where the Hindu god stands with goddesses Saraswati and Laxmi on his sides. The other two pieces could be part of the Bust of Vishnu. These two, they assume, are fragments of the abdomen of the Bust of Vishnu statuette.

On Friday, around 200 Rab personnel and 25 Dhaka City Corporation teams rounded up around 200 fragments. Later, two National Museum officials identified 27 pieces on the spot as parts of the stolen idols. No officials from the museum were on the spot yesterday.

Rab will continue their search today.

Meanwhile, our court correspondent reports: a Dhaka court placed detained former lawmaker Anwara Begum on a three-day remand and sent former deputy secretary SM Mizanur Rahman and 14 others to jail in connection with the artefacts theft case.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ehsanul Haque passed the order after Sub-inspector (SI) Monu Sohel Imtiaz, the investigation officer (IO) of the case, produced them before the court with different forwarding reports.

In his forwarding report placed before the court, the IO said Anwara might be involved in the artefacts theft. So, she needs to be placed on remand to extract vital information about the incident.

The IO placed another forwarding report saying that Mizanur Rahman needs not to be interrogated. However, the same IO placed a 10-day remand petition before the court on December 27.

He, in the forwarding report, gave reasons that Rab earlier recovered 20 fragments of the stolen artefacts from different places and seven arrestees gave confessional statements.

The court yesterday sent 14 others to jail after they were produced before it on completion of their five-day remand.

Those sent to jail are Samiul Abedin, Masud Rana Saiful, Abu Bakar, Shariful Islam Manik, Mohammad Shahjahan, Mohammad Al Shamim, Belal Hossain, Abul Hossain, Abdul Halim Babul, Zaki Mahbub, Edward Roy, Debu Barua, Mohammad Solaiman and Sankar Chandra Dey.

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